Hundreds of super-soft cuddly teddy bears are now on duty in Nanaimo RCMP and other Vancouver Island police vehicles, ready to help soothe children who have seen or been part of a traumatic situation.
It’s amazing how something so small can have such a significant impact, Reserve Const. Gary O’Brien said Tuesday.
The bears were purchased by Central Vancouver Island Crime Stoppers after a civilian employee at the Nanaimo detachment suggested the idea.
A total of 720 bears, each about 25 centimetres tall, were obtained at a cost of about $8 or $9 each, O’Brien said.
The Nanaimo RCMP will receive 75 per cent of the bears, with two per vehicle. They will be replenished as needed.
Crime Stoppers volunteers are distributing bears to other Central Island RCMP detachments in Ladysmith, Oceanside, Port Alberni, Tofino, Ucluelet, Lake Cowichan, North Cowichan, Shawnigan Lake, Salt Spring Island and Gabriola Island.
Children offered bears while being interviewed and at upsetting situations in the field will be able to keep them.
In the past, a private company donated bears but that stopped several years ago.
O’Brien said last year, a woman dropped into the Nanaimo RCMP station asking to speak to him.
She told O’Brien and two other officers what a profound impact a bear that he had given to her when she was 11 or 12 years old had on her life about 20 years earlier.
The woman had been walking to a local store when a man driving a van approached her and made sexual comments. She was terrified and ran home and hid in her bedroom.
O’Brien got the call and went to her house. “She’s traumatized,” he said. “So I sat there and talked to her and I brought one of the trauma bears and I gave it to her.” She calmed down and left her room and was able to help identify the man.
O’Brien said she told him: “You had such an impact on my life. It got me through a terrible situation. I kept that bear all my life.”
The bear was with the girl when she faced other traumatic situations. When she was in foster care, she would tell people that an officer gave her the bear.
By this point in the story, all three RCMP officers were teary.
Then the woman said: “I now have my own son and he wants to be a police officer because of how you reacted to me with that bear.”
In another case, O’Brien was called to a domestic dispute attended by other officers. A man and woman were yelling and screaming and the man was being arrested and taken away.
In the midst of the scene was a little boy of about four or five, O’Brien said. “He’s absolutely white. He’s traumatized.”
O’Brien said he gave the boy a bear and started talking to him. He said he saw the boy slowly recover. “It removed him from that terrible situation.”
It was “probably the most significant experience I had with using the trauma bears.”
To submit a tip to Crime Stoppers, call 1-800-222-8477 or submit a tip online to cvicrimestoppers.com.
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